Jupiter's Big Moon Prevents It From Developing Beautiful Rings Like Saturn

It is made of gas, but is more than twice as massive as every other planet in our solar system combined. Surrounded by 79 separate lunar companions, one of which is a prime candidate in the quest to find extraterrestrial life. It was even named after the king of the ancient Roman gods. Jupiter seems to have it all — except the cool rings.

For some strange reason, this alpha planet has rings that are to Saturn’s spectacular circle like chopsticks to a tree trunk. Thin. Not significant. “Unlike Saturn’s ice rings, which are full of large chunks of ice and rock, they are made up of tiny dust particles,” according to NASA. Jupiter’s disks are so fragile that we didn’t even notice it until 1979, thanks to the agency’s Voyager 1 spacecraft and, with some luck, perfectly placed sunlight.

But on Thursday, researchers beginning to understand why Jupiter has these insane flaws said they may have finally found an answer. Details of their conclusions can be found on arXiv, and will soon be published in the Planetary Science Journal, per a press release.

“We found that Jupiter’s Galilean moons, one of the largest moons in our solar system, would very quickly destroy any large rings that might have formed,” Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who led the study. research, said in a statement. “As a result, Jupiter is unlikely to have had large rings in its past.”

Saturn’s rings, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, dazzle in a dark sky.

NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), MH Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and Team OPAL

In other words, Kane and colleagues believe that the gravitational pull and sheer force of Jupiter’s orbiting moons – especially the four largest Galilean moons – will obliterate any and all matter that is trying to produce a Saturn-like ring around the gas giant.

“The big planets form big moons, which prevents them from having substantial rings,” Kane said. Potentially, this might also explain why Neptune’s rings are also so light – even though the blue sphere’s halo is still slightly larger than Jupiter’s, from Earth’s point of view.

Jupiter and some of its moons are visible through the 3.23 micron NIRCam filter from the James Webb Space Telescope. If you look closely, you can also see the planet’s thin rings.

NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

To reach their conclusion, the team essentially ran dynamic computer simulations of Jupiter’s Galilean moons in orbit, as well as Jupiter itself orbiting the sun. Then they waited and watched to see how long it took some rings like Saturn to form, if they did, and watched what happened when they started to form. “The results largely indicate the stable orbital slashing imposed by the Galilean satellites,” the study says, “and the dynamic drying of the dense ring material” within a given region.

On the one hand, it’s unfortunate that Jupiter’s moons have become the gatekeepers of the awesome ring of peach-striped windy worlds — for both scientists and amateur space enthusiasts.

First, if Jupiter did have rings, they would appear brighter to us than Saturn, Kane says, because they are much closer. Saturn is almost twice as far from Earth. And second, rocky or icy rings can carry a fair amount of information for scientists who want to understand a particular planet’s past.

“To us astronomers, they are blood splatters on the walls of a crime scene. When we see a giant planetary ring, it’s evidence that something catastrophic has happened that put the material there,” Kane said. Prior to the simulation, Kane had hoped Jupiter had more powerful rings long ago, but may have lost them over time. It’s possible that such rings are temporary, the researcher thought.

Jupiter’s moons in Galilee. Europa is one that is thought to hold evidence of alien life.

NASA

“It’s been bothering me for a long time why Jupiter doesn’t have more amazing rings that would put Saturn to shame,” said Kane, also mentioning the next steps for the team’s research. It’s also about the mystery of the planetary rings, this time about Uranus, another gas planet.

In essence, the study researchers think maybe Uranus appeared upside down on its side due to a collision with another celestial body long ago. Drawing on the crime scene analogy of Kane’s blood splatter, they believe his ring holds a secret that will decode whether their suspicions are correct.

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